Day Watch

Rating ESRB: Adults Only Genre action Publisher GamersGate External Links Official Day Watch Website

How am to be making the fight good fight evils? Much premium battles in dark world for adventure finding. As am playing hero villain to winning against Others. Sorry for that, but this is but a small sample of how your brain begins to function after playing an hour or two of Day Watch. This title is a Russian port following the minor splash that was its predecessor Night Watch, a poorly translated port that is. The dialogue in Day Watch is done up entirely in Russian, now that posed somewhat of a problem in that, well, I DON'T SPEAK RUSSIAN! But don't worry the good people behind the Watch bought a literal English / Russian dictionary, and gave it to us as is. The product is something of a mish-mash between an interesting mod for Fallout Tactics, when it collides head-on with discount 'Learn Russian Today!' emersion software. But sadly it falls fairly flat on both.

The lore behind Day Watch begins with two armies meeting on a battlefield long ago. One, the Army of Light, vanquished evil and spread noble ideals; the other the Army of Darkness, killed their way across the land sowing destruction and woe in their wake. One day the two armies clashed in the ultimate battle of Good vs. Evil. After and long a mutually destructive battle, yadda yadda yadda, the powers of Good and Evil decide to break up our good old fashion, 24 hour day into a regular old two shift job. With good presiding over the day and evil owning the night, and the red tape that manifests itself as The Watch, a police like organization that enforces rules of its alignment, stuck working the 'grave' shift with their opposites.

Another useful analogy for Day Watch is that it feels very much like playing a beta version of The Sims: take person, make person move, wait, move more, wait, interact with object or person, wait. Yes, all very similar, that is, if The Sims was a cheap knock-off of a decent movie. The game also bears a striking resemblance to Fallout Tactics, but the instant drawback is instead of wielding a nuclear powered laser rifle, you're given an enchanted playing card or forced conjured up magic knife, and when all else fails, use your fists. This title's combat is painfully turn-based, again, much akin to the old throwback Tactics.

The player squares off with fists, firearms, and magic while still juggling the bulky burden of its Turn Based style. Each party member is conveniently accompanied by a Health and Arcane Energy Bar. So if Peitrof stats getting a little low on HP, Nicolyana can pass him an enchanted can of soda for a quick pick-me-up.

One of the more interesting parts of the Others' combat is the hyperspace arena of the Twilight. At any time the Others can fade out of view of 'mundanes' and slip into the Twilight space between worlds. In the Twilight a characters 'magic pool', oh lets just call it 'mana', is constantly draining; but all spells and effects cast by the user are far more potent. This also makes for a handy way to turn a city-block wide magic flinging, shape-shifting contest into a quiet, invisible scuffle.

Even moving around outside of combat comes off as slow and unresponsive. Dialogue around the bar comes in two forms. There's perfect English, and 'What the Hell are they even trying to say?' Russenglish. Now, normally the learning curve doesn't really figure into most games, but with the advent of Russenglish, unaccompanied by comprehendible audio, you have a confusing, and sometimes misleading how-to. Each time a new idea or ability is introduced into the game, the player is issued a psudo-informational attempt at explaining the newfound phenomenon.

Sure the games a port, sure some parts are still under development, mistranslations, I can handle that. But the damn thing still looks so old. Most players have experienced one of the Fallout games; I don't need to relive it visually in a different setting. Most characters, even in the middle of one on one combat, seem slowed and blocky. This rather special ballet of Magi/Vampire wanna-be's is constantly interrupted by ugly, time consuming spell effects going off at different intervals. Close-ups of characters are lacking at best, and with huge black walls serving as backgrounds, the entire package just seems a little unfinished. At least fun, slightly cheesy, music accompanies non-combat portions of the game, but the player still finds themselves dragged back again and again into the short, repetitious action theme so tell-tale of impending combat.

Featuring worse scripting than an amazingly dubbed Kung-Fu film, and choppier movement than the Ring girl, Day Watch exemplifies everything the movie is not; Interesting, Fast Paced, and with remotely up-to-date special effects. What's the lesson in all this? Simply that a good movie does not a good game make. A title like this is a real let down. Potential, rushed and shipped out, with out the true QA testing it deserved, has made what could have been a really popular success story, into a confusing, bulky, and generally unpleasant experience.